ABSTRACT
Across the nation, the debate over metropolitan sprawl and its impact continues decade after decade. There is little agreement on the definition of sprawl or its alternatives: compact development, pedestrian-friendly design, transit-oriented development, and the catch-all term 'smart growth'. Urban sprawl (also referred to as suburban sprawl) has become the dominant metropolitan development pattern in the US The first attempts to measure the extent of urban sprawl were crude. The ease of measurement associated with the early sprawl indices came with a lack of precision that led to wildly different sprawl ratings given to different metropolitan areas by different analysts. The same mistakes made in early quantitative studies of sprawl have been made in recent studies using satellite imagery. Most scholars now agree that sprawl is a multi-dimensional phenomenon. The concept of sprawl naturally brings to mind large geographic areas. An individual street or block may contribute to sprawl, but we would not say it is sprawl.
